Here, as in the majority of Old Testament prophecies, no break is made

between the sufferings and the glory.  No interval is allowed between `the

acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance of our God' (Isa. 61:2,

but cf. Luke 4:19).  The rejection of God's King was only partly seen; the

abeyance of the kingdom was a secret.  Thus we may place the two passages

`I will open My mouth in parables; I will utter things which have been

kept secret since the overthrow of the world' (Matt. 13:35).

`Why speakest Thou unto them in parables? ... Because it is given unto

you to know the secrets of the kingdom of the heavens, but to them it

is not given' (Matt. 13:10,11).

Everything leads us to expect that, just as in Psalm 78, we shall find

in these parables some of the inner working of God's counsels relative to His

purpose in Israel, and that to introduce the doctrinal teaching of the gospel

of the grace of God, or the dispensational teaching of the Mystery which is

not a subject of revelation until over thirty years later (Eph. 3:1 -10), or

to attempt to make them speak of the millennial kingdom, will be to confound

things which differ, and signally to fail rightly to divide the Word of

The parables are particularly dispensational in character.  Their

object is not to provide a moral lesson or a text for a gospel address.  How

many have gone astray by reason of this mischievous practice! The parable of

the Prodigal Son serves those who have no desire for the retention of the

Atonement with a `proof' text for the universal Fatherhood of God, and the

reception by Him of all who come, irrespective of the one way of acceptance,

the mediation of Christ.  The parable of the Unforgiving Servant is made to

teach, in direct opposition to the doctrine of the epistles, that sins once

forgiven may be reimputed, or that a sinner once saved by grace can fall away

again !

Let us remember the Scriptural settings of these parables, the reasons

which drew them from the Lord Jesus, the dispensation in which they were

uttered, and the people and the kingdom about which they speak; we shall then

have no need to be ashamed of our testimony.

Thus far we have sought to clear the way for the study of these

parables.  We shall next endeavour to present to the reader the arrangement

of the parables of Matthew 13 and to enter into the teaching of these

parables of the secrets of the kingdom of the heavens.  While all the

parables of the New Testament have a dispensational setting that must be

perceived before their true teaching can be discovered, the parables of

Matthew 13 are peculiarly important, so that we supplement these introductory

notes on parables generally, with a fuller exposition of the parables of this

Before we examine the parables in detail, we must examine them

together.  Some of our readers may be surprised to find us speaking of the

Eight parables of Matthew 13.  It has become almost sacred to prophetic

students to speak of the seven parables of Matthew 13, so that we shall have

to set out the complete arrangement in order to demonstrate the fact that the

Lord gave eight parabolic or figurative utterances in connection with the

`mysteries (or secrets) of the kingdom'.